Interoperable Standards for Smart Grid: US$ 8.5 million for two year support to get there

The Smart Grid in the U.S. (and all over!) relies on information and networking technologies to allow advanced control and communication capabilities. "It is a key component of President Obama’s plans to achieve energy independence and to address climate change.", according to NIST.

NIST has awarded EnerNex (based in Knoxville, TN, USA) to help in developing "Smart Grid interoperability standards" and helping in standards "harmonization effort". Under the US$ 8.5 million contract, EnerNex will help NIST during the next two years to reach a higher level of interoperability of systems and devices needed for a smart(er) electric power delivery system.

Many people in charge of the U.S. power delivery system - obviously - have understood the importance of a sustainable Interoperability in the utility domain.

Two crucial "interoperability projects" have been run by EPRI many years ago: UCA 1.0 and UCA 2.0. The UCA 2.0 was taken over by IEC TC 57 as the foundation of IEC 61850 and IEC 61400-25. The GREAT cooperation between the North American experts and experts from all over has let to the BIG success of UCA 2.0 - which is (of course) now IEC 61850.

Click HERE for a comparison of UCA 2.0 and IEC 61850.

I would appreciate if the history would repeat: The development of the many standards for a SMART(er) GRID will be done by international cooperation for a global market!! The need for smarter systems is an international requirement - to the good of human beings and the nature - in Russia, Germany, USA, Australia, ... Smart experts at TERNA (the Italian TSO) have already started to make the Italian Transmission Grid smarter with IEC 61850:

... and some 350 Indian experts have been trained on IEC 61850 in a three day event in Bangalore:

And how are you getting involved? With the help of real experts you can speed up your knowledge in international smart grid standards very fast - ask the right experts during the upcoming IEC 61850 events in Frankfurt, San Antonio, Nürnberg, Brisbane and Sydney, ...